Germans get paid to use junk electricity: Wind power generates when people DONT want it

Welcome to the world of baby-economics where people think a “negative” price is a sign of success. In Simpletown people are cheering. But in the real world a price signal that’s negative tells us that someone is selling something so awful they have to pay someone to take it away. It’s a burden that must be got rid of, like trash.

Germany set to pay customers for electricity usage as renewable energy generation creates huge power surplus – The Independent

Electrons cannot be created nor destroyed. If you make them, you have to deal with them. Negative pricing is a bad thing, a sign of “junk electricity” — a burden. It’s utter nonsense in a free market.

From the outset, I’m skeptical that anyone is actually paying someone to take electricity. If wind farms were coughing up dollars (euro) to “customers” surely they would just disconnect their spinning thingo from the grid? Who wants to be a shareholder in a company that forgets to lock the turbine, or press the “off” switch, and has to pay customers to take its electronic trash? The truth (whatever it is) will turn out to be some variation of an unfree market. Probably the companies pumping the unwanted electricity must be ordered to keep pumping by some government ruling, or subsidized by people (taxpayers or bill payers) who have no choice.

The headlines are occurring this week because a nasty storm hit Europe over the weekend. Sadly at least five are dead, but wind farms made out like bandits… and someone got robbed. But who?

A stormy weekend led to free electricity in Germany as wind generation reached a record, forcing power producers to pay customers the most since Christmas 2012 to use electricity. Power prices turned negative as wind output reached 39,409 megawatts on Saturday, equivalent to the output of about 40 nuclear reactors. To keep the grid supply and demand in balance, negative prices encourage producers to either shut power stations or else pay consumers to take the extra electricity off the network.

Spot the contradiction. Was it “free” or were they paid? Think about how stupid the situation is if people are paid to take electricity. It would be in their interest to do a “Power Hour” and turn on the pool pump, the air con, the heaters, the oven, the hot taps, and let them run while dollars add up in their account. Tell me again how this helps the environment?

The Green Optimistic (sic) thinks this is not just a good thing, but a historic glowing “new world” where “modern economics has hit the wall”. I think someone has just sold Nicolas Say a perpetual motion machine:

Here is the thing, for my whole life I have been told that everything costs money, there are huge problems that involve endless wars against poor people, and that money for sure doesn’t grow on trees.

I have come to find out, that today, all of this might be high grade bull$#&%.

He goes on to outlay his plan for the Germans to get rich by mining bitcoins with “free electricity”. Good luck with that plan.

UPDATE: Ho! Czech’s so unhappy with “free energy” they are cutting off surges at the border

Thanks to ROM in comment #5 we find out that this “historic” moment may be partly because the Czech’s have got fed up with Germany dumping the excess wind power into their grid and have spent about $70m installing phase shifters on the borders to stop “disruptive surges”. So intermittent power is sometimes so worthless that other nations would rather spend money to reduce spikes of “free electricity” that could potentially cause a black out.

ROM: “…the Czechs have installed phase shifters in their grid system at their borders as the Poles are also doing. Which means that the Germans are now stuck with their own crazy wind generated s***

The Czechs have installed their first batch of phase shifters which can block the flow of German energy when and if required to keep the Czech and Polish grids stable, on their grid systems at their national borders and which own the Czech’s case, became operational in September this year.

And it certainly is not admitted by the renewable energy pimps…. but now the Germans are getting stuck in their own self created grid instability and can no longer export that instability into neighbouring nations grids.

S&P Global Platts: “The main aim of the phase shifters is to prevent disruptive surges of electricity from Germany, mainly caused by wind power production in the north directed to some of the main sources of domestic demand in the south.

The Czech Republic has been threatened in the past with blackouts because of such disruptive surges. Phase shifters are already operating on the Polish side of the joint Polish-German border to deal with similar problems.”

Germany has spent $222b on renewables subsidies

[New York Times] Germany has spent an estimated 189 billion euros, or about $222 billion, since 2000 on renewable energy subsidies.

But renewable energy subsidies are financed through electric bills, meaning that Energiewende is a big part of the reason prices for consumers have doubled since 2000.

Julian Hermneuwöhner … a 27-year-old computer science student, said his family paid an additional €800 a year because of Energiewende.

As TdeF pointed out in comments, this is like the situation in Australia where the RET subsidy ends up coming from consumers, not from tax revenue. Customers are only paying this fee because they have no choice, as they would in a free market.

[In Australia] The ‘government’ pays nothing. The LGCs and STCs are Carbon Certificates which are theft from fossil fuel electricity retailers and so from all the other electricity users. This is the RET scheme. It is buried in everyone’s electricity bills. Even those who use solar. So is the pay in tariff for unwanted lunchtime solar.

What’s the point? The unfree market isn’t reducing CO2 anyway. (And it wouldn’t help if it did).

Double-useless for everyone, except the renewables-crony-industry:

But emissions have been stuck at roughly 2009 levels, and rose last year, as coal-fired plants fill a void left by Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear power. That has raised questions — and anger — over a program meant to make the country’s power sector greener.

156 comments to Germans get paid to use junk electricity: Wind power generates when people DONT want it

It’s a lovely still Autumn day here in Blighty. Ideal for spraying winter wheat (boo,hiss from the green blob), but not very useful for turning the wind generators. So, if I had an electric car that relied on wind generation, the past few days would have meant that I would either have run the car till the battery was flat or stayed at home and taken the day off work. What a dilemma!

When the price per unit for electricity goes negative, (and here be aware that it’s usually just a spike, and only for a five minute period, if that) that is the cost that all generating entities would get for the total electrical power being generated and immediately consumed for that five minute period, and, as I was informed by the AEMO, the cost is calculated over the previous half hour period to lessen the impact of that spike, be it one way or the other, and every entity gets the same per unit that their plant was generating during that previous half hour.

Either way, no matter what the cost, be it very high or very low, the consumer (me and you) will always pay the same cost per unit that we use.

The German retail system may well be different. I’ve not seen the Australian media say that “customers got paid” to use electricity even though our wholesale prices have gone negative briefly many times. That appears to be a German thing. It may not be true, but that’s what they are saying…

I’ve not seen declarations here that “it’s a whole new world” of economics or energy markets either.

Indeed, they are required to pay a levy so that generators can continue to generate while dumping their excess output at negative prices on the wholesale market. Wholesale in Germany includes export and the Austrians use it to pump up their pumped storage whenever they can get it, selling back the greenwashed output when the sky is dim/dark and the wind doesn’t blow just right.

The perversion of the market by government interference inevitably produces instability, counter-intuitive effects and market adaptations that are anything but sensible, were it not for government interference.

Imagine if the electrical power market were treated the same as a conventional commodity in the EU trade zone: The scheme would be perceived as a government subsidy to inefficient producers allowing them to dump excess production output into neighbouring countries.

“Worldwide there are up to 2,800 trillion cubic meters of methane-bearing gas hydrates — a frozen mixture of water and natural methane — according to the United States Energy Information Administration.

Vast reservoirs of this resource are found where high pressures and low temperatures combine — i.e. buried inside thick Arctic permafrost and under deep ocean floors.

Possibly the planet’s last great source of carbon-based fuel, gas hydrates are thought to contain more energy than all the world’s other fossil fuels combined. “

They have all but spent themselves into oblivion and eliminated the only source of electricity generation that is CO2 emission free. They have installed enough windmill generators to generate such an excess of electricity during a storm they have to pay someone to take it off their hands. This in face of the fact that the CO2 foot print from the manufacture of the windmills will take longer to pay back than the useful life of the windmills. Thereby negating the only reason for the windmills in the first place.

Insane? Not even close. It is so far past insane that you can’t see it with the Hubble Telescope. It is beyond the edge of the knowable universe.

Only a government totally out of touch with reality could come up with such a scheme. Compared to this, the printing of money with ever larger denominations to fight the effects of inflation seems almost reasonable. The only possible outcome is total economic and political collapse.

So what have the Czech’s done to stop the Germanys from dumping their excess wind generated power into the Czech and Polish grids as they have regularly done so in the past thereby destabilising those national grids.

This dumping of excess wind generated power into other grid systems, nearly all of them in Eastern Europe has been the classical German response for last decade or so when they have generated excess renewable power.

Well the Czechs have installed phase shifters in their grid system at their borders as the Poles are also doing.
Which means that the Germans are now stuck with their own crazy wind generated s—t that has the chances of doing a South Australia on the German grid system but for the opposite reasons when the wind blows a bit hard and all those 27, 750 [ approx ] German onshore turbines begin to run at near maximum outputs.

The Czechs have installed their first batch of phase shifters which can block the flow of German energy when and if required to keep the Czech and Polish grids stable, on their grid systems at their national borders and which own the Czech’s case, became operational in September this year.

And it certainly is not admitted by the renewable energy pimps , pushers and scammers but now the Germans are getting stuck in their own self created grid instability and can no longer export that instability into neighbouring nations grids.

“The Czech Republic has long been drawing attention to the problem of unscheduled flows of electricity both in bilateral discussions with representatives of the German government, and at the EU level,” Jiri Havlicek, Czech minister for industry and trade, said during the official launch Friday.

The main aim of the phase shifters is to prevent disruptive surges of electricity from Germany, mainly caused by wind power production in the north directed to some of the main sources of domestic demand in the south.

The Czech Republic has been threatened in the past with blackouts because of such disruptive surges. Phase shifters are already operating on the Polish side of the joint Polish-German border to deal with similar problems.

Germany itself faces internal grid bottlenecks which have triggered the price zone split between Germany and Austria due to so-called ‘loop flows’, where electricity was flowing through power grids of Poland and the Czech Republic back into Austrian and Bavaria.

Germany’s grid expansion has been lagging behind the boom in wind power with the pending nuclear exit expected to increase regional North-South imbalances before new major grid links come online.

But Germany has opened the 380 kV Suedwest power line, linking the Eastern state of Thuringia with the Southern state of Bavaria, improving transmission capacity by around 5,000 MW which, together with the phase shifters on the Polish and Czech borders, has helped reduce unscheduled flows especially during surges in wind power production inside Germany.

Poland relies largely on black coal fired generation while the Czech Republic is big on nuclear. Neither generation method can be turned on and off at short notice as unrestricted flows of wind electricity from Germany required.
The German grids have become less stable but the problem was being exported eastwards i.e. the Germans were avoiding blackouts by exporting blackouts to its 2 neighbours, neither of whom have any patience left.
The French and the Dutch have also announced their intentions to install phase shifting transformers at their junctions with Germany.
This will make the problem worse for Germany, which will be forced to channel all surpluses through Denmark to the Swedish and Norwegian hydro schemes. Those 2 nations have benefitted from the Danish obsession with wind by hundreds of millions of euros annually, as they buy cheap (esp. at negative prices) and sell dear. There is another problem for the German operations in that the 2 Nordic countries may not be able to take all the surplus now. This would mean that German coal fired plants would have to be shut down, and then restarted just in time when the wind drops. Grid controllers will soon be on stress leave.

Pierre Gosselin’s excellent German to English climate news blog, NoTricksZone, gives more information on this change in both the ability of the Germans to inflict their grid instabilities created by their very high penetration of renewable wind and solar energy into their formerly ultra stable and ultra reliable electrical generating grid system, onto the still relatively stable grid systems of the surrounding nations.

Plus comments on the removing of renewable energy subsidies for the German wind generators by around 2020 when the legislation runs out which I have touched on in my post at #13 below.

There are some glaring examples here in the outcomes of the German “Energiewende” , the “Transition to Renewable Energy” so favoured by Merkel, for Australian politicians on just what the consequences are for the nation and most of all for the interests and well being and health and living standards of those very constituents those politicians “claim” to represent but rarely ever do.

They being too tied up in looking after their thuggish mates in the union head quarters and in business and amongst the inner circles of their fellow political travellers to bother their two solitary brain cells very much with some research in depth on what such a fundamental change in a nation’s energy regime might entail and how and whom and how much it will impact on the nation and its citizens.

As the German experience is showing and as we here in Australia are already experiencing, the shift to renewable energy comes at a very high price indeed for the lower status, low earners in our society , for the profitability and the ability for business and industry that creates jobs and work and generates new innovations, to continue to operate with some stability.
And for the continuation and improvement of living standards for all Australians.

The lessons are all out there in Germany, Spain, the UK, Scotland, Ireland where a number of families have won multi million Euro claims for damage to health from wind turbine health destroying infrasound recently.
Plus numerous American states and in Canada , Ontario being a classic case of how to destroy are very cheap and reliable grid system by enforcing and imposing by government mandate, a high percentage of renewable energy onto the citizens.

All of the above plus many more nations and states have experienced very serious economic impacts and extreme societal and business disrupting experiences when they have moved to encouraging high penetrations of renewable wind and solar energy into their formerly very stable fossil, nuclear powered electrical generating systems via massive publicly funded and mandated subsidy schemes to force the imposition of renewable energy onto an entire society.

It seems that we as a nation are incapable of electing politicians who are genuinely interested and capable of putting the Nation and its citizens first ahead of their own selfish personal interests and endlessly Kowtowing, fore lock tugging to very wealthy, totally amoral and avaricious vested interests in the renewable industries and the policies of the Green’s “back to the caves for mankind” policies.

For all of us who don’t really know what “Phase Shifters “[ i.e.; a highly specced and very large type of transformer, each of which is apparently individually calibrated for each situation ] actually do and how they work to control the flow of energy through a cross connected grids, this simple explanation on the problems of German grid flow instabilities impacts on the neighbouring nations grids might go some way towards your education on this European specific grid problem.

Or for that matter on any set of grids that might have power flow problems across interconnectors.

I mentioned the other day that new installations of onshore wind farms had dried up recently, following the ending of subsidies.

It appears that something similar has happened to solar power.

As with onshore wind, the Renewable Obligation system was closed to new capacity from April 2016, but with a grace period for installations up to March 2017.

Moreover, the latest CfD auction this year excluded established technologies, such as onshore wind and solar. The previous auction was in 2015, and out of the five successful projects, two have been installed and the others cancelled.

Effectively therefore, all subsidy mechanisms have now been withdrawn from solar projects.

[New York Times]
Germany has spent an estimated 189 billion euros, or about $222 billion, since 2000 on renewable energy subsidies.

For this $222 billion of renewable energy subsidies, as of 2016, the Germans have now managed to generate their national primary power requirements [ thats ALL power useage of every type ] as per the” wagon wheel” graph

—–

Sources of German primary power generation of all types including electrical and mobile and etc;

Mineral Oil ; – 34%

Natural Gas. – 22.7%. [ mostly Russian gas which is leading to considerable trauma in Germany due to Russian political pressures. ]

Hard coal ; [ the black stuff! ]. – 12.2%

Lignite [ Brown coal to us of which Germany has a lot of! ]. – 11.4%

Nuclear power; [ to be phased out in early 2018 ] ; – 6.9%

Renewables; – 12.6%

Others ? – 1.8%
—————-

“Renewables” as the provider of just 12.6% of the German primary energy sources and as the recipients of that $222 billion in subsidies since 2000 can be broken down to;

Waste ; – 1.00%

Hydro; – 0.6%

Wind power ; – 2.1%

Solar ; – 1.2%

Biomass; — 7.3%

Geothermal; — 0.4%

___________________________

And the unasked question, one that the politicals who are foisting this energy debacle onto our nation, never ever have the intellectual curiosity to ask this question;

What do we do with all that renewable waste and who pays to clean up all that waste such as Wind Turbines when they reach the end of their operational and economic life at about 20 years?

[ 20 years of operational economic life for renewable energy generators is the European renewable energy experience ]
.

Isnt this the ERON business model?
Take power off the grid at negative prices to charge batteries at the consumers expense, and then sell it back into the grid during those nasty spikes that seem to be so common in SA.

South Australia is leading the globe in wind and solar AND its attendant problems. Germany only has 30% market share. It is still rare that the German wind generation exceeds the maximum demand. In contrast SA wind regularly exceeds the state maximum demand and is sent to Victoria. That was the main reason that Hazelwood could not survive in the market. The consequence of Hazelwood closure has not been good for Victorian consumers.

So far Germany has not experienced a complete blackout. SA has experienced one complete blackout as well as periods of load shedding.

Australia is not as well segregated as Europe. Consumers in other states are mostly unaware that they are supporting the SA experiment through the transfer payments for LGCs and STCs produced in SA. The ACT government is on the same band wagon, aiming to go 100% wind and solar at the expense of consumers in other States.

Germany has much less willing neighbours than SA who are not so ready to compromise their power supply network stability and electricity prices.

Rick:
The Germans have only been able to get away with this because of their 9 interconnectors which enable them to dump any surpluses onto the rest of Europe. Basically their system is some (reducing amounts) nuclear and brown coal fired, neither of which can stop and start easily. They have limited ability to dial down output so they run pretty much continuously. The variable suppliers (gas, hydro, pumped storage have pretty much left the market) so reducing flexibility in the system.
The wind output is largely surplus to their needs so they dump electricity onto their neighbours. Their wind operators get subsidies but the coal fired plants lose money (by the billions) during these events, but are forced to operate by law. Their neighbours have got ‘stroppy’ and are moving rapidly to keep the problem inside Germany (except for the Swedes and Norwegians who are making money from the mess).
When the Germans can no longer dump enough surplus they will (indeed already do) pay turbines NOT to generate. That also pushes up the cost of subsidies and doesn’t help the reliable generators stay in business so there will be a massive blackout if they become bankrupt. That will be the end of any coalition government and Merkel and the Energiewende.

As Ive always advoctaed – dont vote for any of the 3 main Collaborator parties, by voting them out you bar them from power, by extension you remove the fingers of the globalists from the till….and they will hate that….but, meh, thats good IMHO…

They did not do it at the last election anywhere near enough to force a radical change and topple both major parties. The reasons is simple. Many people had high hopes for Turnbull. That has now all evaporated, except of course for some who are hard core Turnbull supporters because they will always vote Liberal and hence are brain dead – just as brain dead as those who always vote ALP or Greens. It reminds me of what someone told me who was a Labor supporter. He said the worst Labor government would still be better than the best Liberal government. Such arrogance is not that uncommon – and it happens both ways. Now Turnbull and much of the his party is on the nose. There is no way the LNP will win the next election. I would not be surprised if they lose by a shocking landslide. He and his party as a whole are toxic. It matters not what people think of the ALP and Greens, who are toxic as well. The border protection issue will not save the LNP. Neither will the fact that Labor will be more destructive. Governments lose elections, oppositions do not win them. What would be best for the country is for a hung parliament that would force one of the major parties to change direction on a number of important issues, such as the causes of escalating electricity prices. Given that’s unlikely to happen expect the gradual demise of this once great nation to continue until the end. Note too that the debt issue is no longer talked about. We are already approaching a trillion so I wonder how far can we go before our credit rating is dropped. That’s another critical issue yet to be realised by much of the public.

I’m starting to think something major is about to hit the political scene here. I smell a dead carcass in the Liberal Party as it’s tearing itself apart. Not sure if Abbott will play a role in the aftermath so only time will tell. If the polls show another dive it should kick off the big change. Meanwhile, there’s another time bomb; there is a possibility the GG might step in and demand all MPs prove their citizenship status, and if they don’t to his satisfaction the GG should dissolve both houses of parliament and force a full election with assurances the candidates prove they don’t have dual citizenship. The current situation can’t continue any longer. We now look like becoming a banana republic, which should not be surprising given Turnbull is at the helm.

The increased frequency of Julie Bishop’s image in the media of late suggests that the wrong candidate for the soon to be vacant position is getting inside running. Heaven help us if that comes to pass.

How can this engineering, scientific and political claptrap get past the censors?

… because those who push free energy are talking bunkum, and no one does this with a better vocabulary than pseudoscientists, who lace
their junk narratives with scientistic jargon. Everyone aspiring for political office and all those in political office should be made to take a gullibility test to determine their suitability for such office before every election. That may give the electorate a head start in weeding out the Idiots.

So supply exceeds demand for a week and a computer program says logically they should start paying customers? Ha! Only a Green journalist would believe such nonsense. As Tony says, the electricity companies charge the same regardless. The wind people make a windfall. What’s new?

However the notional income of some electricity generators may go negative which means nothing. It just means coal generators don’t get paid.

In Australia windmills get paid the RET whether the electricity is sold or not. That is made very clear by the government. Plus if they do sell the electricity they produce, they want twice as much as coal producers and people have to buy a percentage of wind anyway, so they get paid again, double. So that’s six times what the coal producers who supply 95% of our total power get paid for each Mwhr. Double this at retail and it is not shown on your bill. Worse, it is always the coal producers who do not get paid. Which is why they close. Not rocket surgery. Ripoff.

However our politicians do not understand this? You would think lawyers like Malcolm could read, but then many professional lawyers did not read the requirement that they be Australians only.

So having too much wind is a wonderful thing because energy now prints money? Free money? Since the early days of windfarms, it always has, taken from the wallets and pay cheques of ordinary Australians. Electricity is extra.

If you look at the accounts of the now profitable Hepburn wind farm, they are making good profits. 2/3 of that income is RET the real source of the profits and it will soon be debt free and the investors will own the lot. A wind money pump, straight from your bank. Of course all about saving the poor Chinese from CO2.

Not real sure about your claim TdeF,that they want twice as much for their windtricity tho. That’s a bit difficult if you are a player in the NEM. They still get their money for the LGCs as you say but they basically get the minimum rate in the NEM. Not sure how it works over in the West tho, maybe it’s like you say.

Joe, it’s simple. You pay 4c kw/hr to coal power plus a penalty of 8.5c kw/hr. That’s 12.5c kw/hr for power from coal of which only 1/3 is for actual power. In a competitive market a wind power vendor can sell at 9c a kw hr and
1. people have to buy anyway, to meet their quotas. The RET ‘target’
2. you can charge more and they still have to pay what you ask, up to 12.5c.

It’s a licence to print money, overcharge and get paid whether you sell or not.

The is an onerous fine if you do not present certifictes. $60 a MwHr. One company last year found it cheaper to pay the fine than pay $85 Mwhr. This is the only brake on the runaway prices of Certificates.

You can also buy STCs. These are generated by a calculated 15 years Carbon ‘savings’ in advance by solar systems. They do not even have to generate electricity to earn these, simply install the system and the cash flows. These are however capped at a lower rate than than LGCs.

This is all wrong. It should be illegal under Westminster tradition, the forced enrichment of third parties.

The negative electricity price in Germany benefits its neighbours IF they can use the surplus. The Czechs and Poles are just rationing the amount they take to protect their regular generators. Much of the surplus flows to hydro schemes, esp. Norway and Sweden, but also (via France) to Switzerland and Italy where negative prices are great for pumped storage. I don’t know if the French also benefit or send some onto Spain but I doubt it. Norway and Sweden use run of river hydro so don’t use it for pumped storage**, just shut down their own hydro turbines.

Regarding the RET you miss one point, the wind turbines HAVE to generate to receive a (free) certificate which is sold to the retailers, who have to buy it (or pay a fine). At the current level wind costs about $80 a MWh plus around $82 for a certificate. That $182 is over 5 times what coal fired used to supply at. The coal fired plants don’t buy the certificates, they just have to put up with intermittent disruption, loss of revenue and the cost of operating to provide backup.

** Sweden has shut down its pumped storage unit as it is more profitable to use the German and Danish surpluses at less than the cost of cheap hydro and just let the rivers run free. It is a Green’s idea of paradise.

Certificates are then available for mandatory purchase as you say. Retailers have to find a vendor. $85 currently for each 1Mhwr they sell of ‘fossil’ generated electricity.

However you do not have to sell the electricity to earn the certificate.

This from the environment.gov.au puts is plainly “The revenue earned by the power station for the sale of LGCs is additional to that received for the sale of the electricity generated.”

As you suggest, this is almost incomprehensible. What is the point of generating random wind power if you do not sell it, say at 4am? This I consider such a serious fault in law and seems so obvious it must be intentional.

So if you buy electricity from a coal generator at 4.5c kw/hr, you have to pay an additional 8.5C kw/hr to people from whom you do not buy electricity. This is not for their electricity. This is for the right to buy from someone else. I consider this extortion, not taxation.

Then the wind farm does not have to sell their electricity to get this certificate. If they do, they are up against an opposition which costs 4c + 8.5c = 12.5c kw/hr and can enter the market at 9c kw/hr and win any deal.

So it is likely they can sell their electricity but it is random, so the income to the coal producer is random. As you say, their electricity is far cheaper and preferable and likely sold, but they earn anyway.

The situation is thus

A guaranteed 8.5c kw/hr if you do not sell your wind electricity.

12.5+9c = 21.5c kw/hr if you do sell your wind electricity. You get double for your electricity when you do sell.

And when you have paid off your windmill with this free money, it is all cash for free energy and a free windmill paid unknowingly by the users of coal power, the power which actually runs the country. It is not a tax. Certainly not a ‘Carbon tax’ and the concsciences of politicians are clear. Malcolm Turnbull has no idea why electricity prices are so high. Really?

8.5+9c = 17.5c kw/hr if you do sell your wind electricity. You get double for your electricity when you do sell.

Remember this is at wholesale as a feed in cost to an electricity retailer. At this point the retailer has not made a cent. This is not for distribution, poles and lines. So just double it as a normal business markup.

Now you have 35c kw/hr of which only 4.5c kw/hr was for actual electricity from say Loyyang or Liddell. I consider the idea that only 5% of the retail price is ‘Green’ is ridiculous. I would put it at 45% at wholesale, 90% at retail. That is why such big discounts are available!

Generate without selling? How? You have to be connected to the grid for the wind turbine to operate (it need electricity to start up) which means if you generate then it goes into the grid.
Yes, you get to dump it on the grid anytime you want, and since lots of wind turbines start up at once you may have to drop the price (hence the negative price as Germany has to export surplus) but you get close to the wholesale price PLUS the certificate.
We agree that the end result is expensive (but highly profitable to the wind scammers).
And the wholesale price is artificially increased by the action of the wind farms as they reduce the revenue but not the costs of the coal fired generators (although nowhere near as much as has happened, but everybody is at the trough).

I think you are confusing the situation with that in the UK where wind farms are paid NOT to generate, and I am sure that this will become necessary as more turbines are installed.

Jo, if an Australian wind farm bids at minus $30/MWhr (i.e. 3 cents/Kwhr) and a gas generator bids at minus $20/MWhr and that becomes the highest bid for that 5 minute or 30 minute period, then all generators effectively have to settle their accounts with that as a debit. But that wind generator also gets to sell an LGC to a retailer for about $80/MWhr so they end up positive.
So you are right that the forced subsidy drives wind generators to always ensure that their production is accepted into the grid. Without that subsidy they would not bid negative. But that still leaves unanswered the question as to why gas/coal generators bid negative – I assume it means that the pain of shutting off supply is greater than the cost of surviving for a few hours.
I can’t see any current examples of negative spot prices, but AEMO currently has Qld dropping from around $56/MWhr at 5am tomorrow to $15/MWhr from 5.30-6.30 am before returning to around $60. Presumably they prefer to keep the generators spinning and send power into NSW, forcing some other generator to cut back. However oddly the spot price in NSW for that period is forecast to be about $60. Confusing!

All wind farms have standing bids close to the largest allowable negative value. That guarantees that they get sent out if they are producing.

In SA the wind generators are capped at a combined 1200MW even if the wind conditions allowed more. That means their capacity factor is being reduced by stability requirements. SA already has about 3 times overbuild in its wind/solar capacity compared to average demand. That enabled 39% market share for wind/solar in 2016 before the current stability limits were implemented. These require a minimum number of GTs running and on line plus the 1200MW cap.

To get to 100% renewable requires about 7X overbuild of wind/solar plus a lot of expensive storage.

If the 600MW link to Victoria is removed the 1700MW of wind capacity in Sa would be limited much more often. On a cool sunny day this time of year the SA demand can drop as low as 600MW due to all the rooftop solar being generated but not measured within the AEMO system.

Let’s step through this one more time to see if I understand and can explain how the market works. AEMO manages a market where all registered generators bid to supply power into the grid every 5 minutes to meet demand, which is aggregated into 30 minute averages. AEMO does this by issuing statements to participants and providing a clearing house function for all spot market and reallocation transactions.

Wind generators have an incentive to be the lowest bidders because as well as receiving the wholesale price they also get money from the sale of LGCs to retailers who are mandated by the RET legislation to buy their quota or pay a penalty. So even though there may be periods in the middle of the night with lots of wind where wholesale prices go negative, it gets averaged out over a month. For sometimes windy Sth Australia with nameplate wind capacity about equal to peak demand, the average price paid to generators for October was $69.36/MWhr, but average since July of $90.55/MWhr. However, if gas and hydro stations only bid at times of high demand, they may well receive a higher average price, while wind generators may receive a lower price. But wind generators also get income from the sale of their LGCs based on the amount they generate and provide into the grid, averaging $80/MWhr.

To take as an example the Hepburn Springs wind farm in Victoria owned by a local community cooperative, their 2016/2017 annual report shows that they generated 9,710 MWhr (capacity factor 27.5%). They received as income $59.67/MWhr from sales, and an additional $85.46/MWhr from the sale of LGCs. Their net profit after tax was $634,000 on assets of $9 million. For comparison, AEMO reports the average price paid to all Vic generators for 2016/17 was $66.58/MWhr, so Hepburn received slightly less than the average.

So while “customers get paid” is a great headline, it’s fake news. What it means is that for a period during the month wholesale spot prices were negative, but averaged over the month wholesale prices were positive. And of course what customers pay is not only the average wholesale price but also network costs and retail margins.

In Sth Australia, retail prices include that wholesale price of 9.0 cents/KWhr, RET cost of about 1.2 cents (8 cents LGC times 14% share renewables, but may be higher in SA), network costs of about 12 cents/Kwhr, and retail costs of about 5 cents/KWhr, plus GST of 2.7 cents, to reportedly give SA the highest retail electricity prices in the world.

Interestingly, one of the SA retailers shows a retail price of 42.9 cents/KWhr plus a service charge of 107 cents/day. However then they offer a 25% discount off the usage charge to give a price of 32 cents/Kwhr plus the daily service charge. So talk to your retailer, shop around, and ask for a better deal.
_____Email coming, thanks for the extra info. Noting that EU pricing may be different to AU – Jo

A Ponzi scheme is fraud, paying people interest with their own money while stealing most of it. The people get nothing. This is Australian law and worse. You force people to pay strangers for the right to buy power from their own power stations. Even the State and Federal governments of Australia who own power stations, our power stations and our coal! No one is exempt. No one gets a rebate on their tax because it is not a tax. It is highway robbery.

Possibly the worst offenders are home solar who get half the cost in a direct cash payment based on carbon tax in advance! Then they are paid cash for actually generating lunchtime electricity you don’t want and they don’t want, this time also added to your electricity bill. Home solar is a middle class benefit paid for by the poor who then are forced to buy the electricity too. It’s a huge money go round where the government picks winners and losers. Most people are losers.

A Ponzi scheme is fr*ud, paying people interest with their own money while stealing most of it. The people get nothing. This is Australian law and worse. You force people to pay strangers for the right to buy power from their own power stations. Even the State and Federal governments of Australia who own power stations, our power stations and our coal! No one is exempt. No one gets a rebate on their tax because it is not a tax. It is highway robbery.

Possibly the worst offenders are home solar who get half the cost in a direct cash payment based on carbon tax in advance! Then they are paid cash for actually generating lunchtime electricity you don’t want and they don’t want, this time also added to your electricity bill. Home solar is a middle class benefit paid for by the poor who then are forced to buy the electricity too. It’s a huge money go round where the government picks winners and losers. Most people are losers.

The Australian newspaper published an estimate of $3Billion in RET money flowing overseas. Some of it comes back as windmills and solar panels which are not owned by you. Another $3Billion stays in the country, again going to people who are not you and not for anything you own.

This is a huge industry, all enabled by the so called RET, the Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2001 and its daughters. A Liberal party act under John Howard, whoever promises to repeal this appalling ripoff will get my vote.

This was an evil creation of Canberra bureaucrats, modelled on successful Green schemes overseas and hidden from sight. Most people think it is about ‘targets’. No, it is about billions in free money.

Consider too that the State government and Federal government has to pay, so that also comes out of your taxes. Then the hundreds of millions in secret subsidies to keep Port Pirie, Whyalla, Alcoa, Hazelwood going plus giant batteries, diesel rental and now a grand Snowy Mountain II scheme, all because of the RET.

If it was a ‘carbon tax’, the RET would work out at retail to $400 a tonne for coal, $800 a tonne for gas, by far the highest carbon tax in the world. Even the governments pay it. Gillard’s Carbon tax was only $23 a tonne, a bargain by RET standards.

Turnbull always wanted a form of carbon tax or ETS. Nothing has changed as evidenced by his continued support for the RET and Paris agreement. Contrast that with what Abbott has said of late. No wonder the Liberal party is now split. Yet another reason if the LNP continue on their current path, it will be lucky to lose less than 20 seats at the next election.

In fact to add to the delusion that wind energy is free (so is coal), you now have the fantasy that it makes money out of nothing. If wind energy was really free, why do we have to pay for it?

Further each windmill should pay for the next until the landscape is covered in windmills and everyone is showered in bitcoin. Build one windmill and the others will propagate across teh landscape. Notionally then everyone will be very rich. Wind, the gift which goes on giving. I like the last idea of bottled Scottish wind. Also a bit on the nose.

Wind power is the most important component of Germany’s green energy transition.
The end of subsides for older turbines, however, threatens countless wind farms.
By 2023, more than a quarter of Germany’s onshore wind farms may be gone.
&
Several thousand wind turbines in Germany are likely to be closed down in the next decade because they will no longer receive any subsidies. “If electricity prices do not rise over the next decade, only a few plants will survive on the market without subsidies,” says an analysis by the Berlin-based consulting firm Energy Brainpool.
&
By 2021 alone, 5,700 wind turbines with a capacity of 4,500 megawatts will be closed down. In the following years, 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts each will be decommissioned. The German Wind Energy Association estimates that by 2023 around 14,000 megawatts of installed capacity will be gone. That would be more than a quarter of the currently installed onshore wind power capacity which would be eliminated.

Some political guessing coming out of Europe had suggested that if Merkel had lost the recent German election which she damn near did, then with Merkel out of the way, the whole German renewable energy transition , the whole “Energiewende” program would likely have been abandoned or heavily modified to the point of impotency in the not very distant future.

As it is Merkel is trying to put together a coalition of the business friendly, anti immigration Free Democrats and the anti business , pro free inflow of “refugees” Greens with her Christian Democrats to form a government.

It politically all sounds very temporary to say the least.

With the USA out of any climate agreement, Russia and China giving lip service only and mostly the finger to any slowing of their economies to reduce the dreaded CO2 and if Germany finally pulls the pin on Climate Change and renewable energy, the Germans as we know being very obstinate when it comes to changing their spots even when getting done over most comprehensively, then we will be seeing the end game of this astonishing period of political and activist stupidity, the likes of which later generations, if they can get past their own stupidities, will marvel at for decades and perhaps centuries ahead.

Of course with a good global recession which is due sometime but who knows when [ Climate Scientists with 30 years of modelling under their belts can predict future global catastrophes for decades and even centuries ahead.
Economists and central bankers with two or three centuries of experience and data and forecasting to draw on and modelled can't predict next week's interests rate shifts or bond yields let alone a decent recession or depression. ] any renewable energy demands for further subsidies is likely to have the reverse effect as political survival becomes paramount.
Renewable energy in that case [ Spain of a few years ago is the classic case here,] will simply be told to” F “off and your subsidies are being cut off. So sue us if you dare and if you do we will wipe you out!

Yeh! The runner with the ” bad news for renewables “letter in his forked stick hasn’t made down here to Australia as yet.

Besides doing something different and altering past policies so as to again benefit all Australians and not just the Renewables scammers and the Greens “back to the caves” policies might require our politicals to “Think”, surely a task beyond comprehension for most of them.

don’t despair. today’s bright sparks have it all worked out.
Canberra is halfway there!

25 Sept: FastCompany: Adele Peters: Cities Need To Transition To Circular Economies: Google Wants To Help
The company has made strides in making its own operations and buildings focus on reuse and recycling–now it wants to apply the lessons it has learned to urban environments.
Cities–home to half the world’s population–are already ahead of national governments in meeting goals to cut carbon emissions. Many are now also beginning to think about one of the next steps in sustainability: building a “circular economy,” one that is restorative and regenerative by design…

For the last two years, the tech company has been working with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an organization focused on building the circular economy, to figure out how it can embed circularity into its own organization–and how digital technology can help others, particularly cities, make the transition to a circular economy…

Today, products follow a typical path: Companies dig up materials and fossil fuels to make a product, ship it (often thousands of miles) to a consumer, who ultimately throws it out. In a circular economy, by contrast, products would stay in use as long as possible, and their components would be reused and recycled instead of heading to a landfill…
Cities can plan buildings that minimize material use, in part through shared, flexible spaces. Shared transportation can also be prioritized, and as car use declines, space dedicated to roads can be converted to other uses…

23 Oct: FastCompany: Adele Peters: This Three-Story Tiny House Fits In The Footprint Of A Parking Space
With a floor for working, another for sleeping, and a greenhouse on the top, the Tikku house is designed to replace a city’s parking spots with living space.
PHOTO CAPTION: A prototype of the design, called Tikku (Finnish for “stick”), built for Helsinki Design Week, has a footprint slightly larger than 8 feet by 16 feet.

“This could not be done with concrete,” he says. “It would become too heavy, and it would sink.” By using cross-laminated timber, which is five times lighter than concrete, it’s possible to install the tiny house without a foundation. A sandbox on the bottom balances the building; Casagrande says that because the material is flexible, it also performs better than concrete in earthquakes…

The modules can be built in a factory, and the whole house can be installed in a parking lot overnight. “I would like to emphasize how easy it was,” Casagrande says. “It’s almost ridiculous. Usually, building a house is really a pain in the ass, and it takes so much effort . . . In this case, it just popped up.”…

The first prototype doesn’t have space for a kitchen or running water, based on the reasoning that someone living in the middle of an urban neighborhood could get food elsewhere and shower at a gym (it does have a composting toilet). It runs on its own solar panels, and the wood material is self-insulating and warm in winter, so it doesn’t need to be hooked up to the grid…

As a shift to self-driving Ubers and Lyfts begins to replace car ownership, an increasing number of parking spaces will be unused, and the architects envision parking lots filling with homes. “Out of these Tikkus I could build 10,000 homes behind any Ikea,” he says. “Or if you have parking spots on top of your supermarket, these things are so light, you can easily build a city there.”…

“Instead of sending food waste to landfill, cities can use compost to grow more local food.” Umm, wouldn’t the compost heap take up some space? Then you’d need space to grow local produce. And then there is the need for a communal bathroom area, and a communal food preparation area (possibly with a few tables and a coffee machine?).

Also I cannot see how you can have a greenhouse with solar panels if you were in a country where the sun gets high in the sky.

To paraphrase Mark Twain – AGW dogma combines the minimum of fact with the maximum of speculation.

the Tikku house is designed to replace a city’s parking spots with living space.
A prototype of the design, called Tikku (Finnish for “stick”), built for Helsinki Design Week, has a footprint slightly larger than 8 feet by 16 feet.

What a great, sensible and practical idea. Perfect for all varieties of extreme weather. </sarc>

Cairns should be given the honour of test-driving this … houselet, lots of them, … at the start of the cyclone season.
We could run a sweepstake for how far they would travel when a cyclone makes landfall.

“The first prototype doesn’t have space for a kitchen or running water, based on the reasoning that someone living in the middle of an urban neighborhood could get food elsewhere and shower at a gym…”

Funny how some architects and intellectuals just assume we’re all into their cafe and gym culture, or should be. Because this culture is superior for meeting human needs. Except that it has become a mass culture of a particularly dreary, industrial sort. I’ve had to point out to my inner-city family that most of the restaurant dinners they are taking daily are now just frozen dinners. It’s the reason you no longer hear the clash of wok or smell cooking smoke along the modern Dixon Street. And when they travel to Paris and stop in that quaint little bistro? Frozen dinners.

Gym sweat and frozen dinners. “Smart” living. Gimme a break.

So you put a small unit side by side with another small unit? Instead of one atop the other so that the units insulate one another? Or you put this unstable stick on a patch of ground on its own? And instead of level walking you climb constantly? Three levels for extra internal noise transmission to go with all the external? And you get slightly more privacy than a goldfish?

It’s all the disadvantages of high-rise added to the disadvantages of low-rise. In fact, it actually is low-rise high-rise. But make it sound like a cute piece of Ikea furniture and who cares about insulation, privacy or cyclones.

If you listen hard to the proponents of Sustainable Development it becomes clear what the globalists are really targeting. Ancient rights and privileges which precede democracy and are are far more important than voting – values such as private property, privacy, quiet enjoyment, home-as-castle – are to be dissolved in favour of an enlightened and efficient Grand Collective. Ring any bells?

This is not an exaggeration. Listen to some plausible European intellectuals on the sharing of cars and even homes, the needlessness of ownership etc, and you get the picture. A mix of surveillance, review and smart financing will make it all work. (Now I’m definitely hearing those bells.)

What would have been howled down a mere ten years ago now gets thoughtful nods from TED audiences and the like. Think of Goggle’s Schmidt and his comment that if there is something you want kept private maybe you should not be doing it. This was not said in Madrid in the 16th century but only this year in the USA. And everybody just nodded.

Of course, this New Collectivism is going to be a gigantic bungle, just like the old. Think of the frustrations, cost and waste it has already built into life under the guise of Sustainable Development. Think of the carpetbagging and already collapsed mega-schemes. Think how the Green Left walks so comfortably with Crony Capitalism now it has learned to say “market”. Silly and awful…But right now it the New Collectivism is looking rosy to a lot of people, especially to those who fancy themselves a touch clever.

The little things we say can count. Circulate what Tony has to say on the power industry and what TedF has to say on the RET. Tell people to pop in on Jo’s site. The ABC is an overfunded giant with phenomenal reach, the private corporate media won’t take it on because it is seen as an employment sink in uncertain times for all media. But most people who would rather use their loaf rather than merely feel clever. Big Smug is actually losing but its diffuse opposition doesn’t have the airwaves to announce it.

Easy bulldoze the cities and plant trees. Those that lived there can be housed in the new small community groupings in the forest connected by bicycle paths. Electricity and gas would not be needed as firewood would be plentiful. Industry could then be unmolested including our coal power plants and OZ could get on with being a real powerhouse country.

Jo, If the LRET is not a tax or an excise, is it even legal according to the Constitution? On the one hand the certificates are a gift to Renewables generators thanks to the legislation, exchangeable for cash on an artificial market created by the federal government. On the other hand the same cash to fund this gift is forcibly taken from electricity retailers for the right to buy the non-renewable, dispatchable electricity that their customers want and could always buy before the LRET was legislated, or they get fined $65.00 a MWH. And the electricity retailers simply pass on this massive extra cost on to the consumer, while the government gets to tell the UN that this is their contribution to combatting ‘climate change’. Am I missing something here? This is costing us electricity consumers about $2,000 million a year, and for what – Government virtue signalling on a cosmic scale. Let’s get some legal advice and start crowd-funding the biggest class action on earth! Put me down for $1,000 bucks!

My $1000 too for an appeal to the High Court to challenge the validity of the Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2001 as outside the legitimate right of any Government. It is not a tax. No government can order you to pay third parties. Worse for the right to use our own coal and gas in our own power stations. You get nothing.

Also executed at a Federal level the alleged benefit is non existent. CO2 levels are unchanged. What other benefit is there for the people whose money is taken without our agreement or knowledge.

Consider the unfairness of the windmills in South Australia. Paid by the people of Cairns and Perth. This is the Federal Government forcing its way into State power and States’ rights. This is a cost on using state coal and gas, an exclusive state right under the Constitution.

The Court of Disputed Returns in the High Court of Australia. Lots of good argumemts to rule this Act invalid under precedent and the Constitution and outside the right of any government.

On science grounds the idea that CO2 causes rapid warming or any warming is disperoven by the complete lack of warming for 20 years. No one can demonstrate any benefit for the people of Australia. In fact a great deal of real harm is evident.

1 Nov: SkyNews: with AAP: Coal-fired station not viable: Palaszczuk
A report on the viability of a new coal-fired power station in north Queensland has found it would only return ***big profits if power prices remain high.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told Sky News the report – which was commissioned by the Department of Energy and completed in February – was not viable.
‘It’s not viable and what it said is it will actually increase wholesale prices for many years to come,’ she said.
‘Let’s not selectively pick that out. We’ve got a strong commitment for the hydro around Townsville and the Burdekin and also to connecting that into the grid as well as batteries and storage.’…

Energy Minister Mark Bailey denied the report had been kept secret, and says people will understand why it never made it from his department to his desk and why it wasn’t publicly released.
‘It didn’t take into account basic things that are happening in the energy market, and what we’re seeing in Queensland is a lot of renewable energy projects underway because they are a lot cheaper to build,’ he told ABC radio on Wednesday…

30 Oct: Reuters: Karolin Schaps: Dutch offshore wind farm builders in talks to sell green energy to corporates
Developers of offshore wind farms have traditionally relied on government subsidy payments to guarantee income, but substantial cuts in support mean operators now have to find new routes to securing future revenue.
One of these is locking large electricity customers, for example technology companies that need electricity for energy-intensive data centres or industrial corporates that run heavy machinery, into multi-year supply contracts, also known as Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)…

Last year, Eneco, together with project partners Royal Dutch Shell, Van Oord and Mitsubishi/DGE, won a tender to build 700 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind capacity across two sites, called Borssele 3 and 4.
The Dutch power producer already counts the Dutch Railways, Google, FujiFilm and Amsterdam’s airport, Royal Schiphol Group, among its renewable energy buyers…

Eneco will sell half of the electricity to be generated by Borssele 3 and 4, while Shell will market the other 50 percent. Shell declined to comment on who it will sell the electricity to.
For rival offshore wind builder DONG Energy, which has a Dutch government contract to build offshore wind farms at Borssele 1 and 2, securing a large corporate buyer is also on the table…
One of Eneco and DONG Energy’s potential customers could be tech giant Microsoft which has located one of its large European data centres in the Netherlands…

Redistribution, from the poor and the needy, and the elderly, and from the yet to be born’s opportunities, to the cronies. Down right immoral. Neofeudalism. Yet it is presented and accepted as the opposite.

This whole renewable energy thing is becoming to complex to comprehend. If renewable is so cheap how does the price go up? Why is not taking over all utilities? It all sounds so rosie, yet we have price spikes. ALL costs would be reduced period. Which means there is something funny going on here. There is a reason the wall street guys back renewable energy. Found this article on Thomas Frey web page. Sounds interesting, but I don’t buy it.

Did nobody there think about systemic under and overproduction in the design?

My solution to this, 20 years ago, would be to put energy generation and storage into the contract as a supply-leveling requirement. So, if extra (non-contracted) power was produced, it was shunted into storage at the source, to be held against the days when the wind blows (or sun shines) too little. The ENTIRE responsibility for putting in place the generation, storage and control systems would have been up to the supplier, including a cost mechanism for the supplier to buy electricity to shore up their storage if it needed it.

As to energy storage technologies? The oldest ones I know are the lifting of things to higher elevation. Nature does this naturally (gasp), and the technique is used, for example, to power the lifting of ships in the Panama Canal. The hydrological cycle provides the energy recycling.

For someplace where water cannot be used this way, even with pumped storage, then an alternative (generator pun intended) would be simply to lift large weights in a vaulted underground building, for example, under a forest. Use the excavated rock as the weights, or (in a pinch) the concrete foundations of old wind turbines

When the wind blows too hard locally, the utility does its own shunting to storage. Wind blows too little, they let some weights down. Too little for too long, they buy some back at wholesale from the grid, or they crank up some nice-sized natural gas units, and vent the CO2 directly into the forest above. Multiple, small Thorium reactors would also help, if politically viable.

A couple of days ago, the news “ticker” on Sky News was repeatedly running the message, apparently from meteorologists, that CO2 levels now are higher than for more than three million years. Given that CO2 is plant food, this wouldn’t scare any sensible person but the message is, obviously, intended to scare the gullible.

Ah, but is the CO2 attributed to mankind really from burning fossil fuels? Or could it be from carbon arriving from external sources[pdf] and oxidising at the top of the atmosphere? The IPCC (pseudo)science is so thorough, so careful and so accurate, nobody could possibly know. </sarc> It’s also totally inwards-looking so it would take Alpha Centauri going nova to attract their attention. (That would be far too late.)

The essay linked to can’t really be called a scientific paper. It’s been put together by its author from data in the public domain rather than being original research. It’s certainly original thinking. It’s been written without the attention and the close concern for accuracy which a real paper might have received. For all that, it’s a very interesting and thought provoking read. It has a few issues, but it also, in my opinion, makes some very good points which richly deserve more thought and the attention of some real research.
Read and enjoy.

Close to zero. For CO2, it could be slightly negative. In a paper published this year,[pdf] the author found that CO2 has a very slight cooling effect. Now, that will make some green heads explode.

He points out:

The fact that the atmospheric carbon-dioxide has increased while the average global temperature has increased, too,
does not at all reveal a causal relationship but solely an analogous one.

and

a greenhouse needs a solid transparent roof which is absent in the case of the atmosphere.
And finally, it seems unlikely that the extremely low carbon-dioxide concentration of 0.04 percent is able to co-warm the
entire atmosphere to a perceptible extent.

In other words Magic only exists in the Computer Models.

He also found:

Secondly, the discovery of the near-infrared absorption by gases is reported which is relevant for the incident solar
radiation. Surprisingly, and contrary to any former knowledge, any gas is warmed up, while the difference between air and pure carbon-
dioxide is minor … which delivers the first empirical evidence that greenhouse gases do not exist.

Wardill’s tweet has one reply from Left with Equality:
Adani is a symbol of no action on climate change, profits sent overseas, jobs in old industries, no new industries. Trad must oppose Adani.

Sarah Vogler’s entire Twitter page is like a campaign page for Labor in the Qld election.

7 Oct: Courier Mail: Midnight Oil take a detour to the Reef to protest the controversial Adani mine in Queensland
by Kathy McCabe
AUSTRALIA’S musical activists Midnight Oil have added their power and passion to the fight to stop the controversial Adani mine in far North Queensland.
Staking their Coral Not Coal claim on a hump of sand poking out of the Great Barrier Reef at low tide, the Oils fear the mine and related projects could cause irreversible damage to the natural wonder…
???Frontman Peter Garrett, also a former environment minister, said the mine which is backed by a Federal Government loan of $1 billion to the Indian developer…

1 Nov: Guardian: Joshua Robertson: Palaszczuk refutes claim report backs case for new coal-fired power
Queensland premier refuses to be drawn on reports a Labor candidate said Carmichael coalmine would not proceed
The premier would not be drawn on reports a Labor candidate in Brisbane had told an ABC reporter the mine would not proceed…
Palaszczuk also would not say whether she would be disappointed or relieved if the contentious mine did not go ahead, saying only “if it doesn’t financially stack up, it doesn’t go ahead, but that’s a matter for them”.

It came after the deputy premier, Jackie Trad, commented that the jury was still out on whether Adani would proceed.
“We are still waiting to see if they are serious,” she told the Australian Financial Review.
“We are still waiting for Adani to prove they have any financial investment to support their mine.”…

Palaszczuk said it was “very clear that Queensland does not need a new coal-fired power station”. She said a new plant would “take seven years to build” and was “not viable”.
(HOW? WHERE IS IT?) “Go and have a look at the report. What is very clear, it says a new coal-fired power station would keep electricity bills high for 40 years,” she said.

Palaszczuk defended her government’s 50% renewables target by 2030, saying “we hear a lot of negativity from the federal government” but it had invested $390m in renewables beside Queensland’s $277m.
She said her “main concerns is to keep electricity prices down”.

Labor has pledged to use dividends from state-owned power utilities – previously earmarked to pay down government debt – to stop consumer price rising above inflation.
Energy minister Mark Bailey said he did not review or commission the report on a new coal-fired plant but it showed a “real risk of becoming a white elephant” with industry investors not backing the project…

summary sounds balanced, with One Nation being mentioned, but check the featured guests. worse still, listen to it!

AUDIO: 3mins07secs: 1 Nov: ABC AM: QLD election: Could Adani backlash help Greens win Labor voters?
Minor parties are the ones to watch in this Queensland election, and the Greens believe they could take an unprecedented win in three Brisbane seats.
The party says concern over the Adani coal mine and urban over-development are pushing traditional Labor voters their way.
Like One Nation, the Greens think they’re gaining traction among those voters who are disillusioned with mainstream politics.
Featured:
Jackie Trad, Labor member for South Brisbane
Amy MacMahon, Greens candidate for South Brisbane
Michael Berkman, Greens candidate for Maiwar
Trish Shaw, South Brisbane residenthttp://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/could-adani-controversy-help-greens-win-labor-voters/9106510

the Qld election is being totally dominated by anti-coal, anti-Adani political activists:

30 Oct: SunshineCoastDaily: Geoff Egan: Anti-Adani activists: ‘We won’t stop targeting the Premier’
ANTI-Adani protestors have promised to continue to try and derail Annastacia Palaszczuk’s campaign after tracking her down twice on day two of the election campaign.
A protestor hijacked a morning television interview, and more protestors were waiting for the Premier outside the Proserpine Hospital this morning.
But protesters parked outside the hospital near the travelling media pack’s bus did not see the Premier…

The protestors said they were concerned the controversial Adani Carmichael coal mine would “kill the reef within our life time” and threaten tourist industry jobs.
Protester, and Whitsunday tourism worker, Jessa Lloyd said she feared for her job and her son’s hope of working on the reef if Carmichael went ahead.
“The mine is not going to help central Queensland,” she said.
“It’s not going to provide the jobs it has promised and the damage it does to the reef will destroy more jobs.”
Ms Lloyd said the Stop Adani protesters would continue throughout the campaign and promised to continue to follow Ms Palaszczuk.
“It’s not going to stop. Our voice is loud and we are backed by a large movement,” she said…https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/anti-adani-activists-we-wont-stop-targeting-premie/3252417/

26 Oct: Townsville Bulletin: Central Queensland University to train Adani FIFO workers
by VICTORIA NUGENT
The news comes after Townsville and Rockhampton were named fly-in fly-out hubs for the mining giant.
CQU vice-chancellor Scott Bowman said the program was part of the university’s strategy to offer more vocational training in Townsville…
Professor Bowman said CQU was well placed to help Adani upskill Townsville workers keen to work at the Carmichael mine.
“We’re very supportive of what’s happened there, I think the mayor’s done an incredible job to get that centre because there was a lot of competition,” he said.

Adani spokesman Ron Watson said partnerships with institutions such as CQU would help make sure the workforce had the necessary skill set for the jobs available.
“I think what people have to remember is the Carmichael mining project once operational is a three-generation project,” he said.
“It’s going to be here for a long time. We need to be looking for people to fill the positions that are required.”..

Regarding the recent survey which suggested that only 45% of people would abandon the Paris agreement for cheaper electricity, why can’t the other 55% of people buy exclusively unreliable power at whatever its true cost and the 45% buy fossil or hydro at its true cost? Smart meters will allow this.

surprise…it’s an ABC Facebook poll!!! why isn’t that in the headline, ABC?

2 Nov: ABC: Queensland election: Adani coal mine tops priority issue list in Facebook poll
By Patrick Williams
Environmental issues such as the Adani mine in central Queensland get so much attention on Facebook because there are organised campaigns able to mobilise its supporters at a moment’s notice, a social media expert says.
It comes as the environment, and more specifically the Adani mine, top an ABC Brisbane Facebook poll of top priority issues this election…

10 July: TimesofIndia: India most vulnerable to climate change: Jairam Ramesh
India is the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change and should demonstrate leadership to tackle the problem, said former union environment minister Jairam Ramesh…
The former union minister said India was vulnerable as 60% of its agriculture continues to be rainfed. And while the quantity of rainfall had not reduced, the number of rainy days had come down. This has impacted ground water recharging. The 10,000 odd Himalayan glaciers are receding which would impact the perennial rivers of north-India. The rising mean sea-levels again would adversely affect the country as it has a 7,500 km coast line. Besides, most of the country’s natural resources required for economic growth are in rich forest areas…

***note: “an additional US$700 billion a year will be needed annually by 2030 to finance the transition to low-carbon economies”:

1 Nov: World Bank: More Countries Are Putting a Price on Carbon But Stronger Action Is Needed to Meet Paris Targets: New World Bank Report
Launched just ahead of the UNFCCC’s Climate COP23 in Bonn, the annual review: State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2017 (LINK), presents good and not-so-good news. On the positive side, the value of carbon pricing initiatives – including emissions trading schemes (ETS) and carbon taxes – reached $52 billion, an increase of 7 percent compared to 2016. And with eight new or enhanced carbon pricing initiatives in place since early 2016 – three quarters of them in the Americas (Colombia, Chile, and several Canadian provinces) – there are now 42 national and 25 sub-national jurisdictions putting a price on carbon emissions.

Together, these jurisdictions raised revenues from carbon pricing of more than $20 billion for the second consecutive year, with the potential to raise much more. The report says revenues could increase to over $100bn a year if existing carbon pricing schemes adopted prices consistent with the Paris Agreement temperature targets…

On the less positive side, the report finds that 85 percent of emissions are still not covered by carbon pricing, and that most current carbon prices are significantly lower than the $40-80/tCO2 by 2020 and $50-100/tCO2 by 2030 that the Stern-Stiglitz High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices found to be consistent with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement…

***The report estimates that an additional US$700 billion a year will be needed annually by 2030 to finance the transition to low-carbon economies…

31 Oct: CarbonBrief: Zeke Hausfather: UNEP: Six crucial actions to help close the world’s ‘emissions gap’
Current pledges by nations to reduce their emissions add up to no more than a third of the reductions needed to avoid 2C of global warming, according to a new UN Environmental Program (UNEP) report.
This “emissions gap” is possible to close, it says, but countries need to take action quickly…

The latest annual report (LINK), the eighth in the series, states that there is a “catastrophic climate gap” between the existing Paris Agreement commitments up to 2030 and the reductions required to avoid the worst consequences of global warming…

While it is too soon to say that global emissions have turned a corner and begun to decline, the past three years do show signs that the growth of emissions may have slowed or stopped…
This might indicate a decoupling of energy- and industry-related emissions from economic growth…

The UNEP report identifies reduced growth and declines in coal use since 2011 as one of the major drivers of the decline, with notable reductions both in China and the US. Additional factors include growing renewable energy use, especially in China and India…

‘The online Die Welt here reports that storm “Herwart” which swept across Germany late last month – with wind gusts of up to 140 kilometers per hour – led to a wholesale electricity “price collapse” and thus “exposed the madness of the Energiewende“.

The Financial Times: Kiran Stacey: Reality dawns on India’s solar ambitions
In the FT’s Big Read, South Asia correspondent Kiran Stacey explores the risks of a bubble developing in India’s solar sector. The recent auction to build the 500-megawatt Bhadla solar park in Rajasthan was one of the lowest prices for solar power ever seen anywhere in the world – at just Rs2.44 ($0.04) for every unit of electricity sold.
“But despite ambitious targets and blue-chip backing, some in the industry itself are now starting to ask whether projects can really be built at such low costs,” writes Stacey.

Problems include air pollution sapping solar power generation by a quarter and the cost of solar panels now rising as countries such as the US and India consider putting duties on Chinese-made panels.
“Already, concerns over the runaway Indian solar power industry have started to slow its growth,” says Stacey. “The pace of new tender announcements has slowed 68% in the past year…and since May, no company has come close to bidding Rs2.44 for a new project.”

“The growing confidence in the solar sector around the world would take a heavy blow if Indian projects were to become financially distressed or even collapse,” Stacey concludes.
There is also a related news article in the FT as the boss of the company that won the Bhadla auction now says he regrets the cheap deal, “fuelling fears that the country’s fast-falling solar energy prices may be unsustainable”. “When we made our bid, we factored in a price for every solar panel of 30 cents per watt of power, but since then it has risen to around 35c. Our bid works at 30c,” said Manoj Kumar Upadhyay. If he was bidding again, “the price would be closer to Rs3”, he added.

31 Oct: iNews: Mark Piesing: The road to nowhere?
Electric vehicles promised a future without road pollution. Now environmentalists say they may not be as ‘green’ as we think they are – and must get better
Analysts predict that, by 2030, four out of five vehicles bought will be electric or hybrid. However, some researchers are worried that they may not be the clean, green environmentally friendly dream most people believe…

It’s not just the tailpipe “What bugs me is how in the States we have allowed electric vehicles to be called zero-emission vehicles,” says Joshua Graff Zivin, professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, San Diego. “I am pro- electric vehicles [he has his name down for a Tesla Model 3], but it’s just flat-out deception to call them ‘zero-emission’.
“Zero tailpipe emission vehicles they may be, but the pollution has just shifted to where the power is generated. The person driving the electric vehicle could be in Chelsea, while the person breathing the pollution is in Newcastle.”…

“The general trend is fewer emissions from the tailpipe and more from the manufacturing of the car,” agrees Professor Anders Hammer Stromman, director of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s ecology programme. “The manufacture of electric vehicles has a greater impact on the environment than that of traditional cars because – for example – the production of batteries and electric motors requires more toxic minerals [nickel, copper and aluminium].”

“The CO2 emissions from the production of petrol cars are well understood because it is a very mature industry,” says Robert Baylis, managing director of the London-based industry consultants Roskill Information Services.
***“The shift to a new technology means that in lots of areas there hasn’t been much research regarding CO2 production.”…

In a 2014 paper, Zivin put his head above the parapet to argue that a plug-in electric vehicle such as the Nissan Leaf produces fewer CO2 emissions than a hybrid electric-and-petrol-powered car only where its power is not derived from coal. With coal, it could even double a hybrid’s emissions impact…

Most of the world’s supplies of lithium come from the high-altitude lakes and salt flats where Chile, Argentina and Bolivia meet. The fragile environment of the “lithium triangle” is now at risk from the production of lithium, in a global market expected to be worth $75bn (£57bn) by 2025…
Lithium production involves drawing brine from deep underground. “The water table in these areas of South America has dropped by several centimetres,” says Robert Baylis, “and this a big concern because the surrounding areas are very biodiverse.”
Cobalt has its own issues…

“The focus of the first generation of EVs was on getting a product that works. The focus of the second generation should be energy efficiency and the manufacturing of a greener product.” None of the car manufacturers contacted for the piece was able to comment…
New sources of lithium, new materials to replace cobalt, and new battery technologies and engine-manufacturing techniques could all help reduce the impact of electric vehicles. Coal power plants will grow old and should give way to solar and wind. “In the end, I don’t see we have many alternatives to the electric vehicle,” says Strømman. “We have to make it work.”https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/environment/the-road-to-nowhere/

I would love someone here to critique/comment on whether Sanjeev Gupta will be able to deliver on his plan to power the Whyalla steelworks through a $700 million solar, battery and pumped hydro project – where will his 24/7 power come from? Is what he is suggesting feasible? Thanks in advance.

Oh I think anyone like him with lots of money didn’t get that way from being dumb and making bad investment decisions, maybe he thinks there is a dollar to be made from our state and federal governments in subsidies and handouts that makes it all worthwhile .
I don’t know any business men who want to make friends but they all want to make money .

It includes 200MW of photovoltaic solar panels, a 100MW/100MWh battery storage facility at Port Augusta, 120MW/600MWH pumped hydro storage facility in a disused mining pit in the Middleback Ranges and 100MW of demand response at the Arrium steelworks and other industrial sites.

So for $700 you get:

200MW solar = a real 40MW
Hydro = 120MW for 5hrs or 25MW for 24hrs if you can find power to pump the water.
A BIG BATTERY 100MW, I am guess similar to the other SA battery, say 129 MWhrs or 5MW for 24hrs.

If the hydro and battery were charged you could get 70MW for 24hrs. But to recharge the dam and battery the solar would be fully consumed for 18 days just recharging them for another 24hrs.

It doesn’t make sense.

For that amount of money you could probably build a proper 500-100W power station.

*I don’t regard hydro as a “Green” power supply because Leftists traditionally hate dams and due to the fact that hydro is a properly engineered power production solution, the Leftards don’t like the 24/7 dispatchable nature of hydro even though they classify it as “renewable”. It is unfortunate that hydro is classified as “renewable” when it is actually OK because it is a reliable and cheap and properly engineered power generation unlike solar and wind.

We need to reclaim hydro into the dialogue of reliable and cheap power production along with fossil and nuclear because don’t forget that the Left have always been at war with “our” dams, don’t let them claim hydro as one of “theirs” in the same category as wind and solar.

Obviously, ridiculous hydro schemes such as Snowy Hydro 2.0 which were previously determined decades ago to be non-viable should be not counted among properly engineered schemes as determined by economic and engineering analysis.

The reason the Greens don’t like hydro is probably because it require a dam, and according to them dams will dry up. In other words they are not renewables in their worldview. Of course rains come and go so the Greens are delusional if they think the rains will stop and never come back. Of course anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that dams are not only a good thing they are essential for a nation’s well being and survival long term. We should have more of them for obvious reasons.

Can I remind everyone that the Germans just re-voted the most dangerously batshit insane politician in all of human history and by a massive margin into power. To expect anything half sensible to emerge from that asylum of despair and death would be a bit like expecting the Pope to be pro-Islam.